Making Change (A McRoll in the REAL World Story)
by ilna
Summary: The Allen family makes a little change to their yearly end of summer vacation tradition.


**Notes:** Thanks to Mari and Sammy for the squeal-inducing feedback.

Readers and REAL McRollers - Thank you for your amazing support!

 **Hope you enjoy!**

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 _Making Change (A McRoll in the REAL World Story)_

"So has anyone been thinking about what we might do this year with our change?" Jenna asked, moving to sit on the floor in the living room. Casey and Dylan each held an end of the coffee table, moving it over by the wall and out of the way while Jacob and Kaitlyn waited on the floor. Cody went over to the corner to get the large glass jar they used to collect spare change throughout the year.

"Teen Titans Go!" Jacob cried, referring to the recent movie release.

"Okay, movie outing, that's one option," Jenna said and Kaitlyn carefully wrote the idea on a notepad.

"Tiki's!" Dylan put in as he returned to the middle of the room and sat down. "They've got everything! Laser tag, bowling, mini golf …"  
"Oh yeah!" Jacob said. "Let's do that!"

"I think we should do bumper tubes in Maunalua Bay," Casey said, joining the circle. "My friend Mara went and she said it was _so_ awesome."

"What's bumper tubes?" Jacob asked.

"You hold onto an inflatable tube while a jet ski pulls it really fast around the bay," Casey explained. "You gotta hold on or you'll fall into the water."

Jacob's eyes widened excitedly. "Let's do that!"

"Thought you wanted to go to the movies, Jake," Cody said, hefting the heavy jar over. Casey and Dylan shifted so he could set it down.

"Yeah, but … bumper tubes …" Jacob said almost reverently.

"They have family discounts …" Casey added enticingly.

"We'll have to see how much we ended up with this year," Jenna said. "And remember, everyone has to agree on the activity."

Kaitlyn flipped to a new sheet in her notepad. "Time for guesses."

"$500!" Jacob cried.

"I don't think it's going to be quite that high, honey," Jenna said with an indulgent smile.

"What did we have last year?" Dylan asked.

Kaitlyn looked at her notepad. "$86.59," she told them. "But we put the fifty-nine cents back in the jar."

"I think it's going to be over a hundred this year," Dylan said.

"Me, too," Casey said. "I've added a lot more this year since I've been working."

"Okay, official guesses," Jenna prompted. "Let's see who gets closest."

"$120," Cody said.

"$121," Casey said immediately with a smirk at him.

He chuckled, nudging her with an elbow. "What is this, _The Price Is Right_?"

Kaitlyn wrote down their guesses by their names in her notepad.

"I say $150," Dylan said. He grinned. "And twenty-five cents."

"Kaitlyn?" Jenna asked after she'd finished writing Dylan's guess.

Kaitlyn stared at the jar, her brow furrowed. "I think it will be $100."

"Okay, Jacob, you're up," Jenna said.

Jacob tapped his chin thoughtfully. He grinned. "$200!"

Kaitlyn wrote down the guess and looked at her mother. "What do you think, Mom?"

"Those are all good guesses," Jenna said. "I think I'm going to say $110 this year."

Kaitlyn finished writing and set her notebook aside. They looked at Jenna for the go-ahead.

She grinned. "All right, let's start sorting!"

Cody tipped the jar over in the center of the circle and pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters started to spill out onto the floor from the narrow bottleneck. He continued shaking the jar and tipping it further up as it got lighter until all the coins finally came out.

"Woo hoo!" Jacob cried, leaning over and running his hands and arms along the pile, spreading it out. He grinned at the clinking sound and the metallic feel against his skin.

Cody set the jar aside and they all began sifting through the coins to sort them out.

"I'm doing pennies!" Jacob exclaimed, using both hands to scoop piles of coins toward himself.

"We know, Penny Dude," Dylan quipped. "You like those because there's always the most pennies."

"Even though that doesn't mean there's the most money from pennies 'cause, well, they're only pennies," Kaitlyn added.

Jacob grinned. "Still the most," he said. He looked at Cody beside him. "You're gonna help me with 'em like always, right, Cody?"

Cody smiled at him and nodded. "Yep. Like always."

Each Allen clearly had their own style. While Jacob looked for pennies, pushing anything silver back towards the larger pile, Kaitlyn was methodical, spreading coins out into a single layer and then putting each type into its own pile in front of her.

Dylan picked up a handful and sorted them into piles that way, while Casey, Dime Counter, made stacks of ten dimes as she sorted, putting other coins into piles for others to later count out and roll.

Cody added to Jacob's growing pile of pennies and passed the dimes to Casey, the nickels to Dylan, and the quarters to Kaitlyn. On Jacob's other side, Jenna sorted mostly by touch, watching her children hard at work but with smiles on their faces as they talked and laughed together.

"Remember the year we used different containers for every kind of coin?" Casey said. "I thought it would make it easier because we wouldn't have to sort them, but it wasn't as much fun."

"Yeah, cause we didn't have a big pile in the middle!" Jacob said, grabbing fistfuls of coins and letting them trickle out of his hands to hear the clinking sound.

"Yeah, that's when we got the big jar," Dylan said.

"It's the best container because it's clear so we can see as it gets fuller and fuller," Kaitlyn said.

"I kinda liked the coffee can," Cody said. "You could feel it getting heavier when you lifted it, but it was still sort of a surprise when we finally dumped it out into a big pile."

"Ew, I think this one has some gum on it or something," Casey said, her lip curling as she held up a nickel with a dark putty like substance on it.

"Still counts," Dylan said as Casey scrapped the gum off, leaning back to put it in the garbage by the couch.

Cody nodded at Casey's piles of dimes. "Remember the year you wanted to put them all in order by year," he said, grinning at her.

"Oh jeez, yeah," she said, rolling her eyes. "I was, what, about twelve?" She chuckled. "I made it through about two piles and realized it was going to take _forever_."

"Look at this one," Dylan said. "It's practically red."

"That one is really tarnished," Jenna said, leaning over to look.

"Red?" Jacob asked. "Lemme see."

Dylan passed over the coin and Jacob examined it. "It _is_ red," he said. "Why does it do that?"

"It's a chemical process called oxidation," Casey explained. "The silver reacts with humidity and chemicals in the air and forms a layer that's kind of like rust."

"Can we clean it?" Kaitlyn asked.

"Yeah, you can wash it with baking soda and water," Casey said, "but we don't have to since we're just putting them in rolls and taking them to the bank."

"Ooooh, and then we get suckers!" Jacob said excitedly.

Jenna chuckled. "I think your favorite part of the whole coin rolling tradition when you were younger was getting a sucker at the bank."

"Yeah, and you always got a red one because that's your favorite color, but then you'd taste it and remember you hated the cherry-flavor," Dylan said.

"But we could never convince you _not_ to pick red," Casey added, grinning.

"So Cody would give you his blue raspberry sucker and take your cherry one," Jenna said, smiling fondly at her oldest son. "He didn't even like blue raspberry, but he knew you did."

Jacob smiled at his brother. "Aren't you glad I pick blue raspberry myself now, Cody?"

"Yeah, it means I can finally get root beer," Cody teased before smiling softly. "But I never minded. You kind of got the best of both worlds. You got to pick your favorite color _and_ eat your favorite flavor."

"Thanks to my big brother," Jacob said.

The family continued sorting, and once they'd finished, they moved the coins around, giving all the quarters to Kaitlyn, all the dimes to Casey, all the nickels to Dylan, and leaving the huge pile of pennies in front of Jacob, Cody, and Jenna.

Jacob rubs his hands back and forth on the pennies, a huge smile on his face.

Casey laughed. "You look like a DJ scratching at his turntable," she said.

He grinned up at her. "I can be DJ Penny Dude!"

Smiling, Jenna turned to Kaitlyn who was holding the baggies of coin roll wrappers. "All right, Queen of Quarters and Keeper of the Notepad, remind us what we need."

"We need fifty pennies, forty nickels, fifty dimes, or forty quarters in each roll," she said, passing the bags around. "That means five piles of ten for pennies and dimes, and four piles of ten for nickels and quarters."

Dylan looked at Jenna as he took his bag from Kaitlyn. "I think you started this tradition to make us do math during the summer," he said, smiling wryly.

She chuckled. "That wasn't my goal, but it was a nice unintended consequence. Get stacking, Nickel Man."

Since everyone was now using more concentration to count, there wasn't as much conversation aside from the occasional, "Here's a dime that got mixed in with the nickels," and similar statements. Finally, they were ready to start rolling their stacks.

"I'm so glad we're finally out of those flat wrappers with the two open ends," Dylan said as he slid a stack of nickels into a round wrapper.

"Oh, man, yeah," Casey agreed.

"Yeah, they'd always fall out the other side," Jacob said.

"That's 'cause you'd forget to leave your finger in the bottom end," Kaitlyn said, picking up her stacks of quarters two at a time.

"I would get all my nickels in and then realize one wasn't flat so I'd have to dump them all out and start again," Dylan said.

"These are definitely easier to work with," Jenna agreed, helping Cody and Jacob with the pennies.

They continued rolling coins. Once the three middle Allens finished with their piles, they joined the others to finish up the pennies.

"Time to count!" Jacob said excitedly.

Kaitlyn brought out her notebook and drew a line under the guesses. She wrote "Quarters," and then looked at the rolls in front of her, counting quickly by tens. "$50, plus twenty-five cents," she said, holding up an extra quarter.

"Wow!" Jacob exclaimed as Kaitlyn wrote the total in the notepad.

"Remember, quarters add up quickly, honey," Jenna said. "The other totals won't be quite as big."

"Dime Counter?" Kaitlyn asked, looking at Casey.

"$22.20," Casey reported, and Kaitlyn wrote it down.

"Nickel Man?" she asked next.

Dylan double-checked his total before saying, "$16.85."

"And finally, Penny Team?"

"Go ahead, Penny Dude," Cody said, nudging Jacob.

"$11.07!" Jacob said proudly.

"Okay, time for the Keeper of the Notepad to give us the grand total," Jenna said.

Kaitlyn hunched down, focusing on the paper in front of her and biting her lip as she added up the different amounts.

"Drum roll," Dylan said, slapping his hands on the floor rapidly.

"Drum roll!" Jacob echoed, copying him.

Kaitlyn waved a hand at them. "Shhh, I can't concentrate."

They stopped, letting her finish. Once she wrote down the total, she leaned over to show Casey. "Can you check it?"

Casey scanned her work, quickly doing the math in her head. She smiled broadly at her sister. "You got it."

Kaitlyn straightened proudly and looked around at her family.

"What is it?!" Jacob asked, leaning forward and ready to burst.

"$100.37!" she said excitedly.

"Wow!" Jacob cried.

"That's the most we've ever had," Casey said, and Dylan nodded, his eyes wide.

"Kaitlyn, didn't you guess $100?" Cody asked.

She nodded. "I did."

"Way to go, honey," Jenna said, wrapping her in a quick side-armed hug. "I think that's the closest guess ever!"

"That is really amazing," Casey said seriously. "I don't think anyone's ever even come within, like, five dollars of being right."

"Kaitlyn should get to pick what we do!" Jacob said suddenly. "Since she guessed right!"

"Oh, but that's not how we usually do it," Kaitlyn said, looking around uncertainly.

"She totally should," Dylan agreed.

"But …"

"I think so, too," Casey said. "We trust you. We know you'll pick something good."

Kaitlyn looked at her mother questioningly. Jenna shrugged. "It's okay with me."

Cody nodded his agreement. "What do you think, Kaitlyn?"

She bit her lip, glancing around the circle. "Well, I did have an idea …" she said slowly. "But only if everyone else is okay with it, too."

"What is it?" Jacob asked, eyes wide with curiosity.

"Well, we already got to do some pretty fun stuff this summer, and I was thinking about Aunt Elizabeth's afterschool program … I know we're going to raise money at the auction on Saturday, but I thought maybe we could donate our spare change money, too."

She looked at her family expectantly. When no one immediately spoke, she rushed on. "I know usually we use our change to do something fun together as a family right before school starts but–"

"Well, this would be something we do as a family," Casey said.

"You can buy a lot of pencils and paper for $100," Cody added.

Jenna remained quiet, letting her children make the decision.

"I don't usually think of school supplies when I think of 'fun,' " Dylan said with a little cringe. His expression smoothed and the corner of his lip lifted in a small smile. "But it would really help the program, and that's, like, almost as good as fun, isn't it?"

"I think we should do it," Casey said, her voice firm. "It's a great idea, Kaitlyn. It'll help a lot of kids. And I'm sure Aunt Elizabeth will really appreciate it."

"She definitely will," Cody agreed.

"Dylan?" Jenna asked.

He paused, but only for a brief moment. "Yeah, let's do it."

They all turned to Jacob who had been uncharacteristically quiet during the discussion.

"Well, honey?" Jenna asked.

"I think we should only do it if everyone agrees," Kaitlyn reiterated.

Jacob looked around the circle slowly, thinking of the fun suggestions they'd had before they started counting and all the fun things they'd done in the past with their spare change.

He smiled suddenly. "Change."

"What?" Dylan asked.

"Change," Jacob repeated. "It can mean money," he said, nodding to the rolled coins on the floor, "or it can mean … doing something different, right?"

"Right …" Jenna said, prompting him to continue.

"So I think we should do something different with our change this year, like Kaitlyn said. Let's give it to Aunt Elizabeth for the afterschool program."

Kaitlyn's smile slowly grew. "Are you sure?"

Jacob nodded decisively, growing excited. "And next year, when we have $200, we'll give her that, too! And then we'll have $300 or $500!"

Jenna laughed. "That's a big goal, honey. But I love how you're thinking." She looked around the circle. "Okay, all in favor of Kaitlyn's idea, raise your hand." Around her, five hands went into the air. She put her own hand up, her eyes a little watery as she marveled at the generosity of her children. "That's decided then. This year, our fun end-of-summer activity is donating our change to the afterschool program."

"Yay!" Jacob cheered, and the others followed suit.

"You know something I know will never change?" Jenna continued, with a quick wink for Jacob at the word. She put an arm around Kaitlyn and smiled proudly at the whole group. "That I have the five most wonderful, generous, and amazing kids ever."

They all smiled at each other.

"Well," Cody said, looking back at Jenna and smiling softly, "I guess that shouldn't be much of a surprise. After all, we're _your_ kids."

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 **Hope you enjoyed!**

 **Stay tuned next week when the rest of the family finds out about the Allens' decision.**

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